Writer's Block: God For a Day
First, I would inform the world in no uncertain terms that the office of God is under new management, and that all engagements made by the previous officeholder are null and void. This would be done in the voice-from-heaven manner, in addition to identical messages appearing simultaneously on all recording devices (functional or not), the introduction of a new first page in every book bearing the missive, and the interruption of all television programs and dreams for a brief message from God. Oh, as an extra precaution, the flags of all nations would sport a condensed and stylized version in the national language of the country's inhabitants.
Second, I will have gone back about 18 years, and have picked roughly 300 newborns of random backgrounds, and have waited another 18 years forward again until I can quietly borrow each for a few minutes (which will actually last some hours standing still), during such sessions I shall inform them of my intention to initiate an equal-opportunity hiring program, designed to create a diverse pantheon of minor deities. After contacting all of the prospective gods' and goddesses' listed references, I shall pay visits to their various antagonists and see in what manner they behave to those they dislike. After I select and deify the appropriate choices, those who were unsatisfactory will be returned to their proper time with only vague memories of their UFO encounter.
Finally, I would go absolutely batshit haywire. I will introduce a vicious computer virus that would crumble the banks and countries of the world. I will create the remains of a dozen hideous creatures that make the head hurt and vision swim, all trapped for untold millennia (roughly 20 minutes moving backward very quickly) under glacial ice. I will alter the course comets to collision courses! I will make the seas rise and the trees dance! I will make 17th century dining tables sprout leaves and shove roots into pipelines! I will make mice intelligent and rats as big as wheelbarrows! I will make cellular phones make random calls to random people! I will make cars go plushy and the roads trampolines! I will reverse the world's orbit and give it a healthy lateral spin! I will turn cowhide into gold and make cows invulnerable! I will make my favorite literary characters come to life! I will create a species of insect with a flaming abdomen that will bore into gaslines! I will make saucers fly! I will make ducks walk south for the winter! I will cause such chaos and havoc that my new pantheon will be forced to act! I will make them right deific wrongs. I will teach them that they are to be idols, not heroes. If they try to solve world hunger by making food appear, I will create a mold in the air that voraciously devours all grains. If they try to interfere directly with the world, I will meet and exceed their meddling. I will tell them that they are to be examples of what humans should be. I will tell them that they are to help without touching. They are to stand apart but visible. They are not to lead, but to inspire leaders. I will tell them that they are new morality, success, justice, and happiness for the people of the world. I will tell them that they must look to the future, see the present, and remember the past. I will tell them that they can help in only the small ways. They must only be your nextdoor neighbor who you have over for dinner sometimes and who unfailingly gives you sound advice. They must only be your cat who comes to sit in your lap when you are upset. They must only be the natural disasters somewhere else that make people draw together everywhere else. They must be the murderers and psycopaths (preferably rather inefficient ones) so that no one else must do it. They must be in the open mind, and must open the closed. They must manage the world and be managed by it. They must work to inspire the world to be what it should be.